Sarah and Goliath

September 22, 2008

Sarah Palin has been assailed by the Establishment Leftist media and she has proven that she can take a punch and hit back harder than they can. Encouraging, delightful, and good news for the presidential campaign - but maybe this gal who speaks directly and charmingly can do more than just win elections. Why, exactly, do the Leftist media think that they can destroy her? She has an immensely popular story to tell; her life is the stuff of legend; Sarah is the antithesis of a hypocrite - so what empowers the Establishment Left to take on such an inherently appealing figure?

The Establishment Leftist media is nothing more or less than money used badly. Those who own and manage the organs of this entrenched Leftism are malefactors of great wealth. They have no real talent. They conceded - long ago - actually digging up news stories and providing thoughtful analysis to smaller and more independent people, real journalists rather than corporate functionaries. Sarah took a good jab at them in her acceptance speech. Perhaps she should do more. Perhaps, like Teddy Roosevelt who left office one century ago this year, Sarah should take on the modern "malefactors of great wealth."

When T.R. coined that phrase, he meant Standard Oil and J.P. Morgan and those who used great wealth for bad purposes. Great wealth was not the enemy, and Teddy was clear on that. The use of great wealth to oppress ordinary Americans, though, was quite another matter. We have that today, but it is just not where we are inclined to look for it.

Oil companies are routinely demonized, but oil companies go to extraordinary lengths not to do what offends society. Other big corporations which actually produce something of value are the same. These companies may have great wealth, but they are extraordinarily sensitive about how that wealth is used. They also are careful not to collude against the interest of the common man. The Leftist Establishment media, by contrast, swaggers across our nation like a barroom bully.

Anyone who gets in their way, they crush - or try to. Never since Reagan have these brutes failed so badly as in their punches at the face of the lady from Alaska. She does not care at all what they say. The people that matter to her do not care either. Make up weird stories, throw spitballs at her, do your worst, she seems to say, and I will come up just the way I am now. Sarah simply defies their power completely.

But their power threatens the rest of us. These malefactors hold the many of the chokepoints of information and knowledge in our society. They use their power to punish anyone who does not bow to them and they use their power to lift up anyone willing to sell their souls to Leftist Establishment wealth. Obama is a perfect example. He is, quite simply, a pretty cipher. It is very hard to muster much emotion about Mr. Obama, because he is so incredibly ordinary in so many ways. He has no new thoughts. His political rhetoric is utterly scripted. There is no "there" there. But Barack is the hapless tool of the Establishment Left. He lacks the ability to be anything more.

His party is just the same. Its members, like the illiterate bloggers whose university education has taught them only ignorance and bigotries, work for the Establishment Leftist media. It is their patron. It gives them careers, purpose, power, and whatever else their mortgaged consciences and lightly rinsed minds define as their pay day. They do not fight with the boss. They wait until the boss tells them what to do. They follow the money, even when they kid themselves into believing that a higher purpose than vanity and self-interest move them. These bought folks - Democrats, news readers, college "rebels" (i.e. professional pets), and the rest - are not the real enemy. The enemy is, and has been for some time, the malefactors of great wealth: the Establishment Leftist media.

What makes this particular concentration of power so bad? Why isn't all great wealth equally bad? Well, for one thing, because the corporations which belong to this group violate the first principle of market economics: They do not really compete. If the biggest story in modern politics is Leftist bias in the Establishment Leftist media, then why does not one of its members pick up that big story and report it? Does CBS or CNN exist to scratch its corporate rival's back? Apparently so. Roosevelt and reformers of his age called this collusion the essence of abusive wealth. Monopoly, to those past reformers, was bad. Well, evidence of a monopoly is in behavior, and the Establishment Leftist media acts just like a monopoly. A monopoly which places itself at the choke points of a working democracy is a monopoly which is not just bad, but which is trying to be a dictator.

That is the bad news - and it is very bad new, as all of us know. This is the good news: Sarah Palin. The Establishment Leftist media has no Kryptonite which affects her. She has the heart of a T.R. In her speech, she talked like Dirty Harry, but much prettier and nicer: Go ahead, make my day. Just as importantly, America sees her calling them out. Rasmussen reports that by 51% to 5%, Americans feel that the media (which means the Establishment Leftist media) is trying to hurt her rather than help her. Polls have also shown that Americans believe that the media is trying to throw the election to Obama. Even most Democrats now see just how warped these malefactors of great wealth have made our republic. In a battle against these malefactors of great wealth, it would be Sarah and us against the Establishment Leftist media.

But what should she do? We do not favor more government; we do not believe that government can impose "fairness"; we generally reject the premise of the phrase "I'm from the government. I'm here to help to you." Sarah could confront them. That is what she could do. She could make it clear that just as they have declared themselves her enemy, she is their enemy - only she stands for us, and not for giant corporations who conspire against our interests. Sarah could even say that she is not calling for censorship or control or punishment by government, but rather calling the Establishment Leftist media to account in the public square for their shameful misbehavior.

Someone has to do it. Defeating a hand puppet like Obama is important, and certainly in the next two months, that will be the focus, but after that, Sarah, who challenges corruption where she finds it, could do more for us by challenging the putrescence of the Establishment Leftist media as an elected national leader defending her people from malice and serfdom. Surely, if she had doubts, Sarah Palin has witnessed personally just how ghastly the Establishment Leftist media can be. Americans need a champion against this entrenched wickedness, a wickedness that makes any good old boy network in Alaskan politics seem like a Boy Scout troop by comparison. Such a mission would take more sheer guts than any political leader since Reagan, but Mrs. Palin has that. And nothing she could do would serve America more.